Google wants to Wave hello to Microsoft and Apple

Google Wave creator wants open platform

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Wave - a platform for Microsoft?

Google Wave developer Lars Rasmussen has told TechRadar that he would love to see Microsoft, Facebook and Apple all producing their takes on Wave technology.

Google's communications meets productivity tool is already causing, ahem, waves, with a massive oversubscription of people wanting to test the pre-beta 'preview' build, which is currently available by invite only.

Rasmussen, who is the co-creator of Wave, is keen for the tool to be as open as possible, and for other major companies to join in and make their own tools – as long as they remain interoperable.

Facebook

"We've taken inspiration from a million places including Facebook," said Rasmussen. "And it would be flattering if they took inspiration from us.

"I mean that seriously, that would be nice."

"What we would hope to see happen is that a wave is not just a Google site, it's a protocol - an open technology that we're hoping others will pick up.

"There are lots of ways that people could do that - they could build their own wave server and we'll supply more and more code to make that easier for them or we could make an arrangement where they use our wave server to make waves accessible for their users."

Interoperability

Interoperability is the key word for Rasmussen who explained that the presence of some proprietary technology from Google is making opening up the code a slow process, but one to which he is committed.

"What we're hoping will happen is that interoperability becomes a big deal," Rasmussen told TechRadar. "From the beginning when we started doing this it was not to build a core of communicating that would become another closed silo on the internet; there's too many of those.

"I think we often talk about email and how successful it was, how remarkable it was considering how old the technology was.

"We think the primary reason is that it had a protocol – that anyone could build a mail server and allow users to talk to their users.

"But there are lots of things on the internet that are proprietary closed things, if you are IMing anyone, for example, you have to have the several IM programmes, and I include our own in that.

"So we wanted Wave from the beginning to be open so if someone wants to build even a competing product we'll work with them and support them and make it interoperate with ours – assuming the other party is interested of course.

"But the way we look at it is because it's a communication tool our users will benefit from other people having waves.

Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo

When asked if Google would welcome Microsoft and Apple making their own Wave clients, Rasmussen made it clear that he would.

"That would be awesome – although it doesn't sound super-likely – but it would be awesome," he added.

"We've always said we are looking forward to a Microsoft Wave, an Apple Wave or a Yahoo Wave or whatever – as long as they are interoperable so that our users can talk to their users.

"We try to make it so that there is also room for balance - so there is room to compete but we don't want it super locked down so we are all forced to build same thing, but we want it to be interoperable regardless."